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Write a research project plan
Advice while you complete the Research Planning Workbook
To transform intellectual musings into an actionable project, you’ll want to put together a plan.
Key takeaways
- A research plan helps clarify project goals, timeframe, methodology, and resources needed.
- State your rationale, overall aim, and specific aims, thinking about how aims relate to each other.
- Think through expected outcomes (findings or results) and outputs (tangible products).
- Check that your final plan is coherent, including that your research will address the stated aims.
- Your detailed plan can be summarised in 1-2 pages to attract collaborators, partners, and potential investors for funding.
Read time: 4 min
Here are some key questions and some brief advice as you complete the Research Planning Workbook. Here are some key questions and brief advice as you complete the Research Planning Workbook. You can use it to plan your overall research program or a specific project for a grant or fellowship application.
Why write a research plan
A plan will help you: articulate precisely what you aim to achieve, and why; set limits to the project so that you can deliver outcomes within a sensible timeframe; determine the appropriate methodology(ies); and identify any support (people and resources) required to make the project feasible. Some faculties also require multi-year research plans as part of their internal processes.
A project plan will typically run to several pages. Once you’ve written it, you can also create a 1-2 page summary version that can be used to attract collaborators and partners. If your project requires funding (other than via grants), you can also use this summary as an initial ‘pitch’ to potential investors. When the project is completed, the summary can form the basis of a case study that tells the story of the research and what it achieved, in order to attract future collaborators, end-user partners and/or funding.
Develop your plan
What’s the rationale for the project?
It’s important to be clear about why you want to do the project – what’s motivating it? Invariably it will be addressing a ‘gap in knowledge’ – this is a precondition of most research – but there are infinitely many gaps in knowledge. Challenge yourself to come up with more compelling reasons. What’s important about this particular gap in knowledge? Why might it need to be addressed now? Is it associated with a real-world problem in need of a solution?
Clearly articulating the project’s rationale – the why – will help you formulate its aims, objectives, research questions and/or hypotheses.
What are the aims, objectives, research questions and/or hypotheses?
Disciplines have different conventions about terminology – ‘aims’, ‘objectives’ etc. – so do what’s appropriate for your discipline. Here we use ‘aims’. Similarly, some disciplines expect hypotheses, while others don’t.
A generic formulation you might find useful is this:
- a single overarching aim that encapsulates what the project as a whole is trying to achieve
- a series of specific aims that, together, address the overarching aim. Two to four specific aims is common.
Think carefully about how the specific aims interconnect. Will you work on all of them sequentially or in parallel? Is one aim dependent on the outcomes of another? If so, what happens if the ‘precursor’ aim fails?
What’s the methodology?
There are two main considerations here. Firstly, make sure the proposed methodology will actually address the aims! Secondly, consider what additional support you may need to conduct the project.
A consideration closely related to the methodology is the project’s timeframe. How many months or years do you estimate you’ll need to complete the research? Being realistic about the timeframe may force you to reconsider the aims and methods, especially if you realise that your intended 2-year project is going to blow out to three or four years!
Support may include additional research expertise (e.g. collaborators, research assistants), end-user partners (e.g. industry, community), resources (e.g. equipment, infrastructure) and/or funding (e.g. grants, investment).
Think about how much ‘lead time’ you’ll need to organise this support, and whether you’ll need to apply for access to equipment, archives, and so on.
What support will you need to conduct the project?
Support may include additional research expertise (e.g. collaborators, research assistants), end-user partners (e.g. industry, community), resources (e.g. equipment, infrastructure) and/or funding (e.g. grants, investment).
Think about how much ‘lead time’ you’ll need to organise this support, and whether you’ll need to apply for access to equipment, archives, and so on.
What outcomes and outputs will the project deliver?
It’s worth thinking in advance about what the project will have achieved or delivered when it’s complete. A useful distinction is between outcomes and outputs:
- outcomes are generally the new knowledge that a project generates, e.g. the findings or results
- outputs are the tangible or usable products of research, e.g. publications, patents, conference papers, technologies, tools, websites, datasets.
Does it all cohere?
Ultimately there should be a clear, logical path from aims to methods to outcomes/outputs. The methods should address the aims. The outcomes and outputs should embody the achievement of those aims. In the course of drafting and revising a project plan, this internal coherence sometimes gets lost. Make it a priority to check that everything lines up.